Each fall, the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing presents SpaldingCon, a post-graduate writers’ conference. SpaldingCon is offered both in person and virtually, so alumni can travel to Louisville for on-campus sessions or attend virtually from anywhere. The conference is built around workshops led by Spalding MFA faculty members, with additional curriculum included. Most workshops run November 15 - 17.
Jump to Virtual SpaldingCon, or read on for in-person.
In-person SpaldingCon
This year’s in-person SpaldingCon features three-day, faculty-led workshops on collage writing (led by Dianne Aprile), artistic rule-breaking (Kenny Cook), and shaping a poetry manuscript (Lynnell Edwards). In addition, Sam Zalutsky leads a weeklong workshop on adaptation.
The three-day workshops take place on campus from 9:00 a.m. Wednesday, November 15, through 12:30 p.m. Friday, November 17.
Participants are also invited to attend residency curriculum sessions. Highlights include:
Faculty lectures in various areas of concentration
Presentation by our Distinguished Visiting Author, Professor Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, author of The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
A faculty reading by SpaldingCon workshop leaders
Group meals (pay on your own)
Workshop descriptions follow.
Writing with Scissors: The Collage Form in Prose and Poetry
led by Dianne Aprile
Focal Area: prose and poetry
Format: generative workshop
Worksheet: None
Delivery: In-person, minimum of 5 and maximum of 6 students, Nov. 15 – 17
Pre-assignment: None
In this generative workshop, we will write brief units of text from themed prompts, then stitch them together with white space, weaving connections and meaning out of the resulting collage.Bring your memories, observations, and obsessions to this workshop, and watch them coalesce into the exciting and challenging literary form of collage. The Los Angeles Review of Books describes the collage form as “not telling so much, as layering a story . . . a consciousness, shaped by memories (and) associations.” David Shields contrasts collage writing with traditional form (“a freeway with very distinct signage”), stating that collage “is surface street to surface street—with many more road signs, and each one seemingly more open to interpretation, giving the traveler just a suggestion or a hint.”
The use of white space combined with these brief chunks of contrasting text (poetry, dreams, dialogue, borrowed forms, etc.) encourages the writer to go deep and the reader to be an active participant in the process.
Building the Book: Strategies for Shaping a Poetry Manuscript
led by Lynnell Edwards
Focal Area: Poetry
Worksheet: see pre-assignment
Delivery: in-person, minimum of 4 and maximum of 6 students, Nov. 15 – 17
Pre-assignment: Come to workshop with printouts of all poems you might consider including in a manuscript. In advance of the workshop, I will be distributing a few short articles about building a manuscript that you may enjoy as resources. Also, at your leisure, browse your own collection of poetry and make notes about some of the different approaches to organization you notice in a few of your favorite single-author collections. Are there sections—equal lengths? thematic? use of epigraphs or titles with the sections? Is there an opening poem that appears before the full content? Does chronology or some other time marker govern sections? Is it a “project book” or broadly thematic in part or whole? You don’t need to dive deep here into what the more complex aspects of the ordering might be; just note what appeals to you among the different approaches to creating a full collection.
You’ve got a creative thesis and you’ve got a pile of poems you’ve written since your thesis. This workshop will help you re-see your work in total with the goal of creating a full or chapbook-length collection of poems to send out for publication. Questions? Feel free to contact me: ledwards02@spalding.edu.
Register for In-Person SpaldingCon
For three-day workshops: Early-bird registration with reduced cost of $325: deadline Monday, September 11. Regular registration pricing of $375: deadline Monday, September 18.
For full-residency Adaptation Workshop: Early-bird registration with reduced cost of $995: deadline Monday, September 11. Regular registration pricing of $1,045: deadline Monday, September 18.
To register, complete this survey. We’ll confirm your place in the workshop by September 30. Payment is due by October 26.
Accommodations: Rooms may be available at the Brown Hotel for $166 per night, including tax, and can be requested through the registration form linked above (first come, first served). We will notify you whether a room is available by October 11. If the reservation is confirmed, the room payment is due by October 26. A payment link will be emailed to you with confirmation.
Conference Payment and Cancellation
Full payment is due by October 26
85% refund through November 4
50% of fee will be refunded November 5 – 8
No refund after November 8
Cancellation policy for rooms at the Brown
Full refund through November 8. After that, full refund minus any charges made by the Brown Hotel.
Questions? Email Karen Mann at kmann@spalding.edu.
Virtual SpaldingCon
Virtual SpaldingCon takes place November 15 - 17 and features faculty-led workshops on writing personal stories grounded in pop culture (led by Erin Keane), flash fiction and creative nonfiction (led by Robin Lippincott), and excavating family histories in poetry, creative nonfiction, and hybrid work (led by Douglas Manuel).
Highlights include:
Virtual generative workshops: Six hours of workshop over three days, led by a School of Writing faculty member. Workshops meet 2:45 – 5:00 p.m. ET, Wednesday, November 15, and Thursday, November 16; and 10:15 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. ET, Friday, November 17
A two-hour virtual generative seminar with John Pipkin from 12:15 – 2:15 p.m. ET, Thursday, November 16:
Quick Writing Prompts for Generating New Story Ideas
John Pipkin, lecturer
This lecture serves as a refresher course on the basic principles of storytelling and is applicable to writers of any genre. We’ll start by looking at several basic story-structure models such as story wheels, pyramids, and 3 and 5-act structures, and then we’ll do three quick writing assignments and share our results, to show that you only need 15 minutes to generate a new idea. The three different writing prompts will include 1) Using Modified Clichés, 2) Beginning with an Unexpected Event, and 3) Tormenting Your Characters. We’ll be using a PowerPoint with animations to direct the generative assignments, and students will receive a handout with the prompts so they can continue to use them on their own.
Workshop Descriptions
Workshops are open to post-graduate students from any area of concentration. Spaces will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis. If there are more applicants than spaces available, we’ll start a waiting list. Workshop places will be confirmed by September 30.
Who Do You Love? Writing Personal Stories Grounded in Pop Culture
led by Erin Keane
Focal area: primarily CNF, but any area (as the muse takes you)
Format: generative
Worksheet: none
Delivery: virtual, minimum of 5 students, maximum of 8, Nov. 15 – 17
Pre-assignment: participants will receive links to pre-reading about a month before SpaldingCon
Are you mourning Sinead O’Connor? Obsessed with Doja Cat? Know way too much about The Legend of Zelda? Feeling some kind of way about Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie? Have very strong memories tied to McRib season? Writing personal stories through the lens of pop culture—from chart-topping hits to mass-produced toys to Oscar winners to chain restaurants—is both invitational and invocational, for fans and haters alike. In this class, we will take a layered approach to writing about our pop culture obsessions, combining critical observations, research, and memoir to draft the obsession essay that only you could write. (We’ll talk about possible publishing outlets, too.) While our workshop will be oriented toward the essay, we’ll talk about how this approach works in poetry and fiction as well, and participants are welcome to write in any form they like.
Flash Fiction/CNF: A Generative Workshop
led by Robin Lippincott
Focal Area: fiction, creative nonfiction
Format: generative
Worksheet: none
Delivery: virtual, minimum of 5 and maximum of 8 students, Nov. 15 – 17
Pre-assignment: none
Writing short forces and/or inspires the writer of fiction/creative nonfiction to pay closer attention to language and the poetic techniques of lyrical compression, as well as to formal experimentation. In this workshop we’ll study some exemplars of the form, create new flash pieces based on verbal and visual prompts, and then share and discuss the new work.
Diving into the Wreck: Excavating Family Histories in Poetry, Creative Nonfiction, & Hybrid Writing
led by Douglas Manuel
Focal area: poetry, CNF, hybrid (open to all areas, and participants may generate work in any area)
Format: generative
Worksheet: none
Delivery: virtual, minimum of 5 students, maximum of 8, Nov. 15 – 17
Pre-assignment: none
For so many of us, the family story is one that defines our young lives and beyond—what we either run from or toward for the decades after leaving home. In this class, we will “dive into the wreck” of family narratives. What events in your family seem to define your life? What relationship with which family member?
The narratives we hope to discuss can include those that seem to determine so many people’s young lives: trauma, abuse, neglect. Yet those blessed with stable families have plenty of stories to tell, too—a glorious summer road trip that revealed the loving relationship between siblings, or a reckoning with a parent’s humanity.
As guidance for methods of grappling with the family narrative as a resource for creative writing, we will consider poetry, creative nonfiction, and hybrid works of Ai, Anne Carson, Sharon Olds, Ocean Vuong, and others.
Register for Virtual SpaldingCon
Early-bird registration with reduced cost of $280: deadline Monday, September 11. Regular registration pricing of $330: deadline Monday, September 18.
To register, complete this survey. We’ll confirm your place in the workshop by September 30. Payment is due by October 26.
Conference Payment and Cancellation
Full payment is due by October 26
85% refund through November 4
50% of fee will be refunded November 5 – 8
No refund after November 8
Questions? Email Karen Mann at kmann@spalding.edu.
p.s. There's more on offer at the fall residency! You can learn more about our ten- and twenty-year class reunions, Writing at the Brown, full-residency workshops, or the Post-master's Certificate in Writing Enrichment at this blog post.